Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday October 28, 2009 @01:02PM
from the we-can-crash-rockets-into-the-oceans-like-a-champ dept.

coondoggie writes "With a hiss and roar, NASA's Ares I-X rocket blasted into the atmosphere this morning at about 11:33 am EST, taking with it a variety of test equipment and sensors but also high hopes for the future of the US space agency. The short test flight — about 2 minutes — will provide NASA an early opportunity to look at hardware, models, facilities and ground operations associated with the mostly new Ares I launch vehicle. The mission went off without a hitch — 'frickin' fantastic' was how one NASA executive classified it on NASA TV — as the upper stage simulator and first stage separated at approximately 130,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. The unpowered simulator splashed down in the ocean."

It may really be the case that the launch was 'frickin fantastic', but just having finished reading Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age [amazon.com] I don't put a lot of faith in what the media gets wind of with regard to space technology. This stuff is really complicated, and the general public doesn't understand that test flights going awry is not necessarily a bad thing-- so officials often put a nice veneer on the results.

I hope it really was fantastic. A lot of people put a lot of time into this thing. But this thing is so politicized, I'm not holding my breath.

AFAIK there were a few minor hitches. One of the cameras on the first stage went out and they had trouble telling if it had splashed down or not. Also, the weather was a hassle (as it should have launched yesterday:P) and there were quite a few lightning strikes last night they'd been worried about.

This is also the NASA that is facing such intense political pressure to justify the continuation of its manned spaceflight program -- and the NASA that Feynman slammed for its veneer-over-veracity attitude surrounding the Challenger disaster.

This is also the NASA that is facing such intense political pressure to justify the continuation of its manned spaceflight program -- and the NASA that Feynman slammed for its veneer-over-veracity attitude surrounding the Challenger disaster.

Unfortunately that idiotic attitude advocated by Feynman-- "never take risks" -- is pervasive through NASA, and avoiding risk-taking is now NASA's standard operating procedure.

Unfortunately, "taking risks" is exactly what NASA should be doing. You cannot progress without taking some risks.

I don't know any way to get around this problem-- any program funded by Congress is going to be incredibly risk-averse, because the one thing that they cannot stand is bad publicity.

Yeager's comment was that when an Air Force test pilot is killed, they name a street at Edwards after him, and go on with the program. When an astronaut dies, they shut down the program for two years and congress holds hearings.

Every risk, in hindsight, is a stupid risk. And there will always be someone there to say "I told you so, but you didn't listen!"

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what risk is. There are no risks in hindsight, but only outcomes. Second, not every risk can be anticipated (these risks are often called "uncertainty"). Nobody is going to say "I'd told you so!", if the Shuttle were to be zapped by aliens while on the pad.

Third, stupid risks have two characteristics: 1) they are easily anticipated or were anticipated (someone will be there to say "I told you so") and 2) the cost of mitigating the risk is far less than the benefit gained.

Risks are one thing. Unnecessary risks are another. If someone warns you "those O-rings are not safe," you fix them. If someone warns you "this debris falling may damage tiles which should be inspected," you do something about it. There are going to be PLENTY of risks associated with manned spaceflight about which you do not have detailed prior knowledge. That's no reason to be careless when you have a problem staring you in the face.

I hope it really was fantastic. A lot of people put a lot of time into this thing. But this thing is so politicized, I'm not holding my breath.

Ok, I am not a space nerd but I enjoy rockets and think they're cool to watch. That said, I watched the thing take off and it looked like any other damn rocket that has ever taken off before. Personally, while I'm glad we're retiring the Shuttle, I thought they were a whole lot fucking cooler than this rocket. I really feel like we've regressed to the 1960s.

As this launch is partly testing the Solid Rocket Booster stage, you could argue its regressed 750 years into Chinese firework technology!.

Although both would be a little unfair and while its easy to joke at it being basically a high tech firework (at the moment as the other stages are not used yet), the goal of making launches cheaper is very important.

Although to be fair its no where nearly as impressive as even a Shuttle. Its currently not even as i

I wish we would back a design like Skylon. Now that would be something to get really excited about and it would fill even the general population with a sense of awe to inspire a whole new generation of space exploration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]

Yeah sense of awe, as in WTF... the skylon is unrealistic for the following reasons:

1) Looking at the wikipedia article, first off, 50% faster than blackbird engines is a pure pipe dream. Material science has not improved enough for turbine blades to survive that, and the intakes required to decelerate incoming air to subsonic will either be too heavy, or impossible, or not distribute airflow evenly enough, etc etc. Tech and cad design help some, but not enough.

2) Second wiki article problem, twice the size (twice the wing area?) but three times the weight, that things going to be a real handful at take off.

3) The sabre engine probably will not work, as the designer himself only gives it a TRL of 2 or 3. By his own admission, that's right up there with warp drive proposals and telekinesis. The ISP is too low, the T/W is too low. Following the old 6-6-6 rule, whats wrong with 6% bigger fuel tanks and an off the shelf engine?

(The 6-6-6 rule is mach 6 (good f-ing luck) at 60Kfeet up (difficult to impossible for an air breathing engine) gets you a whopping 6% of the way to orbit)

Well, yes if it went awry and that's not a bad thing, then it was 'frikin fantastic'. Its like crash testing cars. Yes, the car is crashed, but we know know more information about how it will affect the occupants so we can build safer cars.

So do they recover all of the parts and go over them closely to look for stress fractures/bad parts/etc?

When they are developing a new rocket, I would certainly hope they do more than a few of these test flights. One successful test flight doesn't thrill me. Multiple test flights utilizing different manufacturing runs of critical parts does.

They only planned to recover the first stage from what I had read. As the NASA official stated it the second stage and mock crew capsule would splash into the ocean like a giant lawn dart and sink to the bottom. I thought the analogy was funny because thanks to the government some large percentage of the population (those under say 25) have no idea what a lawn dart IS.

I remember making our own (though I was born in '81 so I could have gotten my hands on the real thing). My grandfather kept chickens, ducks, and geese as farm animals, and there were always some feathers laying around the yard (I think - I'm hoping that my cousins weren't just pulling the feathers where they could get them:)).

Anyways, we'd take a bundle of feathers and push them through a large heavy hex-nut. The hex-nut gave it enough weight to throw and come down with force, and the feathers stabilized the flight and made for a good tip when coming down:).

The upper stage was not a real upper stage. The capsule was a mass simulator. The first stage was only a 4-segment booster with a mass simulator filling in the location of the 5th segment. This flight was about aerodynamics, control authority and a test of the 1st stage recovery parachutes.

Yes, it was designed to do that. The NASA-TV footage talked about tumble motors. By causing them to tumble, they get slowed down more by the atmosphere. They won't travel as far downrange and they'll impact the water with less speed. This will make the parts easier to recover.

They will probably do all that, but the big thing in this flight was to characterize the structural dynamics -frequencies and amount of the flexing of the structure. They did that by doing programmed attitude changes that put forces on the structure, and then use accelerometers and gyros to see how much flex there was, at what frequencies it happens, and how quickly it damped out. Those things are all critical for both stress analysis, and control system design.

Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?

Would it be harder to take something like an Atlas 5 (that's got literally hundreds of flights under its belt) and modify it for human space flight then to build a completely new rocket (granted taking bits from lots of different rockets)?

It's technically more straightforward and easier, but politically about an order of magnitude more difficult. Using commercial vehicles like the Atlas V is covered in section 5.3.3 of the report [nasa.gov]. They estimated 3-5 years for a provider to achieve orbital crew capability. They also estimated a cost of $300 million - $1.5 billion per provider, so if they had contracts with three competing providers initially and one of them droppped out, that would be a total cost to NASA of $2-$2.5 billion. For comparison, NASA's current estimated development cost for Ares I+Orion is $35-$45 billion.

We went from nothing to the Moon in under ten years; it's taking us four years between test launches of something that we've done before?

September 12, 1962. President John F. Kennedy says "We choose to go to the Moon [historyplace.com]". Nine years later Alan Shepard is playing gold at Fra Mauro.

Fast forward to 2009, when President Barry Obama says "Well, I guess you can go to the Moon, but I can't pay for it. Maybe you could go to an asteroid or play some chess instead." NASA starts looking for loose change in the couch to finance the next test launch.

"So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space."

...just not today, so maybe we should wait and rest and look behind us for a while, until that darn economy fixes itself.

Actually, even prior to the Augustine Committee's report (which suggests using commercial crew instead of the Ares I for most of its options), NASA was already planning to delete the Ares I-Y launch [flightglobal.com] to try to speed up the Ares I development schedule. Also, the table (with NASA-provided figures) in general should be taken with a large grain of salt -- even though NASA's public estimate is that the first Ares I launch will be in 2014, the independent assessment [nasa.gov] by the Augustine Committee estimated that due to

They are excited about things that other countries like Russia have been doing for decades? Huh? Progress? I will gladly be corrected, but it just seems to me that this is a step backwards in comparison to the stuff that they were doing before...

They are excited about things that other countries like Russia have been doing for decades? Huh? Progress? I will gladly be corrected, but it just seems to me that this is a step backwards in comparison to the stuff that they were doing before...

They are excited about things that other countries like Russia have been doing for decades? Huh? Progress?

Technically speaking, the US has been able to build new human-capable rockets for decades as well, with the Atlas V, Delta IV, and SpaceX Falcon 9 (scheduled for later this year). The difference is that those are private companies. This has been NASA's first newly designed rocket launched in ~30 years (albeit a suborbital rocket), although one wonders if it's truly necessary for NASA to spend $35-$45 billion to try to duplicate the capability already provided by US companies.

It's been quite a while since the U.S. developed a new man-rated booster. In the last decades, we have learned a LOT about spacecraft. Unfortunately, what we learned is that something like the space shuttle is nowhere as maintenance free as we thought/hoped and is fantastically more expensive.

Since we can't build a Saturn V anymore (we'd have to substitute enough obsolete parts that it would be a new design anyway) and we know building a new shuttle is too expensive, it is good to see that manned spaceflight has a future in some form in the U.S.

Ares and Orion are take two on a reusable spacecraft now that we have a better idea what parts are practical to reuse and what parts aren't.

Unlike the Soyuz rocket, Ares includes reusable components. The use of solid fueled 1st stage is expected to make it safer and easier to prep for launch. Things get more interesting once the 2nd stage is ready. It may not sound like much but the engine re-start capability is a big deal.

It's not really a step backwards so much as a lateral step away from a dead-end branch that seemed like a good idea at the time. Manned space flight isn't actually out of the experimental stage yet (and certainly wasn't when the space shuttle was designed). Sometimes progress in experimental engineering looks like a step back at first glance.

I am just glad I was not riding in that simulator. Did anyone else notice the separation, and the flight path of the (in the future to be occupied) simulator? The booster and the simulator appeared to tumble after separation. It could have been the camera angle I suppose, but that front section should have continued on, correct?

it would have done, had it been real and full of rocket fuel. As far as I can tell, because it wasn't a proper 'seperation' (ie, once the bolts were seperated there was prolonged contact), allowing for some slight jostling, meaning the upper stage and the lower stage collided at some point and probably caused the cartwheeling.

The upper stage was clearly hit by the first stage and left tumbling after the separation. In the NASA feed, they had several minutes of continued video from the upper stage with a cartwheeling background, but I'm assuming that it had no attitude control. Glad nobody was riding in it.

The upper stage was unpowered - it was just dead weight that was meant to simulate the mass, moment, strength, etc; of the real first stage. It wasn't meant to do anything but essentially fall off the booster at the end of the flight.

The booster was supposed to fall into a tumble to increase drag so that it wouldn't hit the upper stage simulator (which it may have done anyway). It had rocket motors attached at the base to perform this manoeuvre and you can see these firing at separation.
The upper stage simulator (USS) was unguided and little more than a lump of metal to act as the mass of the real upper stage. As such, it's not surprising that it would fall into a tumble after separation, but it seemed to do more-so than people were expecting. This is not a problem as the USS had no parachutes and landed and sank (as intended) in the Atlantic.

The booster is supposed to tumble after separation, that is its design. Look at its closest twin, the Shuttle SRBs, and you will notice that they tumble immediately after they are separated.

That is by design. On the shuttle,,illiseconds after SRB separation, 16 solid-fueled separation motors, four in the forward section of each SRB and four in the aft skirt of each SRB, are fired for just over one second to help carry the SRB's away from the rest of the Shuttle. Each of the separation motors can produce a thrust of about 22,000 pounds.

The SRB's continue to ascend in a slow, tumbling motion for about 75 seconds after SRB separation, to a maximum altitude of about 220,000 feet. The SRB's then begin to quickly fall toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The Ares SRB derivative uses a very similar system. That in mind, 1st stage tumbling is okay.

As for second stage tumbling, that was almost certainly due to being an unpowered can, for all intents and purposes. While the mockup used in today's flight has the same mass and aerodynamic shape as the real thing, it does not have thrust.

There may also have been some contact, and it is there that something could well be learned. Could be that a stronger retro motor is needed on the second stage coupled with a stronger sep motor on the 2nd. That will come out in the reports that will be filed later.

This was a test, after all, and a good one: it proved that Ares can fly. It flew quite well for some time, and it looked smoother than we may have expected. No obvious pogo-ing, for example.

This was a test, after all, and a good one: it proved that Ares can fly. It flew quite well for some time, and it looked smoother than we may have expected. No obvious pogo-ing, for example.

Actually it proved that a Space Shuttle SRB coupled with Atlas V avionics and a Peacekeeper missile's roll control can fly. The Ares I is actually an entirely different vehicle with almost nothing in common with what flew today, so it unfortunately doesn't answer questions with regards to things like the pogo-ing effect you describe. I'm sure it was an interesting education experience for NASA in how to design a launch vehicle, though.

The upper stage cannot achieve orbit (or rather, the orbit it "achieves" has a -9km perigee. Yes, folks. 9km below the surface of the Earth). The Orion module that ARES-I is designed to carry has it's own rocket which it will use to get into an actual orbit.

I'm an aerospace engineer - I work on planes, but the concepts are familiar and common.

The upper stage DID tumble immediately. The other three aerospace engineers and test pilots watching with me also immediately said "That didn't look right."

The high-zoom ground tracking camera and onboard cameras showed it much better during the replays, where it's clear the separation wasn't as clean as it should have been. But it did not look like the stages hit each other.

It appeared that not all eight of the retro-rockets fired. They were designed to slow the first stage enough to separate the two stages, before the "tumble rockets" fired. From the footage, the retro-rocket flame is visibly asymmetrical. It appeared that only a few of the retro-rockets fired on one side of the aft skirt fairing. As a result, I suspect that the initial separation was not purely fore-aft, but included a healthy rotational component which nudged the second "dummy" stage in a similar slow tumble.

Some comments on this board say "no worries"; the second stage was just an unpowered dummy mass, and the tumble would have been stopped by the final design's engine. Not completely true. They need a clean, non-rotational separation before the second stage engine fires and can fully stabilize the flight path. So the tumble will DEFINITELY concern the engineers.

Finally, don't worry too much about the onboard cameras cutting in and out. Speaking from personal experience in the flight test industry, telemetry is no trivial matter, and downlinking gigabits/sec of data and video is no small feat. Minor mis-alignments in antenna angle can cause momentary signal dropout. Strong jolts (stage burnout, etc.) can also jostle wiring and cause interruptions.

Despite this tumble, the flight appeared to be overall a great success. As the launch director noted to his crew shortly after the flight, the only real delays on the first launch of a very complicated test vehicle were weather-induced (plus the small matter of a fabric probe cover sock that snagged on something yesterday). All in all, I'm quite impressed.

The Ares I is designed to get astronauts and crew module into orbit, where they'll dock with another vehicle launched atop an Ares V. Both launch vehicles are part of NASA's plans to go back to the moon. So the headline isn't completely off.

Well, the way I see it the Ares I is all about a heavy lifting body. That's somthing the shuttle really wasn't ever really capeable of. So to that end I'm very happy.

Going back to the moon isn't simply to say we could. We no longer have all the experianced people from the 60's and early 70's who ran the first Apollo missions. If we can't make it back to the moon then there is no reason to try for mars. To do a mars mission properly, we have to make sure we still can make it to the moon.

Sad to say, NASA, for the most part has become another government bureaucracy.

NASA has always been "another government bureaucracy". The difference between the 60's and now: in the 60's, we had 1) a clear goal to aim for, and 2) sufficient funding to achieve the goal. In recent years we've had neither of these things... and that's not NASA's fault, it's the fault of Congress and the President.

And regarding the space elevator: the laughter has died down, and been replaced with... nothing. That's because there's nothing to talk about. We still don't have the technology to produce carbon nanofibers in anything like the lengths that would be required to build it. Nor do we know if other technical obstacles to building one can be overcome. Nor do we have even the slightest idea what it would cost (and won't until we solve the first two issues). And if you don't know the cost, you can't evaluate whether it's more cost effective than just using rockets. All of which means there's no basis to proceed with a project.

I was watching the launch with my kids on NASATV, and just when the stages separated, the leading stage started to tumble, and NASATV went black. When they came back in 20 seconds or so, they were following the larger stage on its descent.

I have to say, the supersonic vapor plume around the rocket during acceleration was awesome. I said to my kids, "look, they just broke the sound barrier," and the announcer came on with "passing Mach 1".

Very cool looking rocket, more narrow exhaust plume than I'm used to seeing, interesting angled ascent (it didn't go up straight vertically like a shuttle). We like to rag on NASA, but if this is really a an under-3-year project, who am I to cast stones?

The rocket [nationalgeographic.com] [nationalgeographic.com] was the tallest [space.com] [space.com] (and possibly most expensive, at $450 million) suborbital rocket ever assembled, consisting of a solid rocket motor from the Space Shuttle and an Atlas V avionics system, with a non-functional upper stage put on top.

The Ares I-X has roughly the same shape (but different internal components) compared to NASA's planned medium-lift Ares I, which is scheduled to be completed after 2017 with an estimated cost of $1-$2 billion per launch. A lot of people have been calling this a flight test of the Ares I, but considering how drastically different the Ares I would be in flight, it's really quite a stretch, and it also unfortunately doesn't address any of the biggest potential problems with the Ares I (5-segment booster vibration properties, launch abort survivability, etc.). If anything, it's more similar to a full-size wind tunnel test.

Even though the fate of the Ares I itself (and the overall future direction [thespacereview.com] [thespacereview.com] of NASA spaceflight) is uncertain, the >700 sensors on the Ares I-X should provide data useful for validating computer models [spaceflightnow.com] [spaceflightnow.com] used by NASA."

For all its faults, it's still worth noting that this is somewhat of an accomplishment for NASA, as its the first new launch vehicle design they've attempted to launch in 30 years, after a long string of failed designs (X-30, X-33, X-34, National Launch System, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane). Actually, now that I think about it, the DC-X [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] successfully launched, although I suppose that was constructed by McDonnell Douglas for the DOD before it was transferred to (and canceled by) NASA. Of course, one could still ask why NASA is trying to internally design a new vehicle when the private sector has a much better track record over the past 30 years of bringing new launch vehicle designs into service, but I imagine it's still been a learning experience for NASA. Hopefully they'll learn the right lessons from it, whatever those are.

(I largely copied this from a comment I made yesterday, but it still seems pertinent)

Because the Bush administration asked them to that's why. Someone convinced him to want to go back to the moon and beyond. And also different contractors did in fact design the pieces. ATK for one. Thiokol has been building solid rocket boosters for a while now.

Actually, even under the Bush administration, at least when NASA was under Sean O'Keefe, the plan was to have private companies compete with each other to design the best system for launching crew to orbit and beyond. When O'Keefe was replaced by Mike Griffin though in 2005, Griffin opted to throw out all the prior work, directed NASA to pursue his own personal design, which has turned out to be an incredible screw-up. Besides the inherent flaws of the Ares I design, NASA works a lot better when its oversee

Given that this test, while useful, didn't actually use any of the components of a man-rated Ares I, I'm not that excited.

Ares I will use a new 5 segment Solid Rocket Booster (SRB), this was the good old STS 4 segment SRB.
Ares I will use the J2-x powered upper stage, this was a weight equivalent mock-up.
Ares I will use the Orion capsule and it's engine to finish up the orbit, again, just a mock-up with right szie and weight.
Ares I flight control software not built yet, but that's ok, as the hardware it will guide wasn't here either.

You know when the car companies build a clay mock up of that new model? That's about where this Ares I-x test was. Baby steps are ok, but I was hoping for more return on investment.

So I'm annoyed that the test program hasn't progressed further, but in reality, this is rocket science, and at least they got the thing off the ground in a reasonable fashion. The problems here go a lot further than my unease that NCSA isn't that far along for the time and money they've already spent. Here's a list of issues that they still have to face in making this a viable launch system:

What's the lifting capacity of the ARES I? 25mt? That was the declared goal. 24 mt? That was a compromise when other issues crept in. 20 mt? Where the current design is, but Ares I needs 25 mt of lift for an Orion capsule with safety features and lunar capability for 4 crew, and doesn't have it.

Also, when is the Ares I scheduled to fly with the Orion capsule, even in a non-man-rated test? 2013, as NCSA originally planned? 2016 as the Augustine commission recently claimed?? Before the Space shuttle stops flying? Before the ISS is de-orbited? Be nice for NCSA to have a way to get our astronauts to the ISS without "borrowing a Soyuz."

More importantly, how much has NCSA spent on the development of the Ares I to date? 5 billion? 6 billion? They still have to finish the 5 segment SRB design and tests, the J-2x Upper stage engine and tests, the new upper stage and tests and the Orion capsule and tests before any manned flights can take place. That's got to be another $5 billion easy. All this to get the lift capacity of an Atlas V or a Delta IV heavy and a theoretical better safety rating.

I'd say something scathing and then list all the things the space program has benefited humanity and your daily life with but luckily NASA still has enough time to explain it all nicely without being condescending like I would have been:

Where does the money COME FROM? Especially in a burgeoning depression? A government that produces surpluses, though it does so on the backs of the people, at least can justify some absurd pork and waste.

Not to be a downer, but cutting government spending and raising taxes to balance the budget actually worsened the 1930's Great Depression. Its the worse thing any government could do when there is a shrinkage in credit liquidity. Balanced budgets anti-inflationary measures can only be done when the economy is healthy when there is room to avoid a deflationary death cycle.

The car you are driving (that you "cannot afford to register") will have directly benefited from the space programme's work into composites and computing. The computer you are using to type your ill-informed comments will also owe a lot to the space programme.

Are you suggesting that no one pays any tax? Or that any tax that is collected is used solely to reduce the deficit? If you do that and cut all the spending that benefits humanity (and that creates jobs by

You are broke! I want Uncharted 2. I don't buy it, because I do not have any more money. Unlike your nation, I don't apply for a Chinese credit card and ring it up because I am broke! I like to live within my means, instead of appealing to the working people of China for yet another loan. America is the deadbeat drunkard cousin of the world who always needs $2000 for this great new business idea he has. When you are broke, when you are twelve trillion dollars in debt, you have to stop spending money! It bog

Spain is a country in which thousands of people are homeless and thousands of others live in squalor. Where is the government getting the money to waste on the stupid foolishness that is world exploration at a time like this? The New World is a frontier for our great-grandchildren to consider, as for us, perhaps we should get to work solving our religious struggles or feeding Africa. There is more than enough prosperity, more than enough resources in the world for everyone to have food and shelter and clean

The newly discovered continent has all manner of valuable and exotic fruits, vegetables and animals. The savages living there are in need of being converted to christianity and having their gold and silver plundered. There is trading to be done. There is rich farmland and vast unexplored forests teeming with game. Why it's a whole new world (tm), and ours for the taking!

vs.

We can spend billions of dollars to send no more than 4 people to a barren, desolate place where they will die almost instantly if there

Even with the very tiny amount of money the US spends on its space program (compared to something like military spending or social security) the human race as a whole has benefited significantly from the things we have learned while doing it. Not just that the moon is grey and barren, or that ants still make anthills in zero gravity, but new materials, new ways to do old things, new computing, new understanding about the universe, a better understanding of the sun and outer planets and greater understanding of the building blocks of the earth itself.

It wasn't just some wasted hole that they poured money into to piss off the Russians.

Space exploration and the whole area around how to actually explore space needs much more funding than it currently has.

$17B a year is not going to make a dent in the economy or in poverty or homelessness, or climate change or anything else. Those are the results of human nature and/or normal cycles, and fixing them is a matter of political will and good policy, not a few extra dollars.

Spending a small amount on space exploration is EXACTLY what the government exists to do -- do things that require large amounts of money (for an individual or group) with high risks and low immediate reward, but that have the potential for great reward for all of society.

And if you think $17B a year with increases less than inflation and ever new directives and goals are 'endless resources' I think you need to take a look at the scale of the federal budget.

A new capsule is being developed. But the basic idea is indeed very similar to the capsule on top of a rocket that spaceflight started with. The shuttle is an amazing job of engineering, but at the end of the day, it turned out that making a vehicle capable of gliding to a landing isn't an effective way of reducing cost per launch.

Gliding back to land is not a big deal, the biggest problem with the Shuttle is the false economy of having the main engines be re-usable. This means main engines are attached to the shuttle itself, which means the vehicle has to be mounted on the side of all that dangerous crap. If the main engines were one-use then the crew and orbiter could be on the very top of the assembly, safe from any fuel tank or SRB shenanigans. Furthermore, you could have a crew rescue rocket like the Apollo assembly had.